Chapter Text
The door to Tessa’s room clicked shut behind the trio, Tessa letting her shoulders slump as she helped Cyn onto her bed. She huffed a sigh, allowing the stress of the night to dissipate, if only a little.
She was officially out of the watchful gaze of her parents. Exhaustion suddenly began to weigh on her, her shoulders aching and head starting to fog. Spending time around her parents’ stuffy guests was always exhausting, and coupled with the balancing game of keeping track of Cyn, it only added another layer to it.
“J, be a dear and help a girl out of this thing?” she asked, tugging at the uncomfortable dress she was wearing.
J hastily came to her side and unzipped the dress, the way her metallic fingers lingered on her skin not going unnoticed. It was about halfway unzipped when the creak of the ancient floorboards caught the pair’s attention. They looked over to see Cyn shakily tiptoeing towards the door, a devious look on her visor.
“CYN!” Tessa shouted, the little drone seizing up and falling over.
“Ugh, that’s IT! ” J shouted, roughly grabbing Cyn by the arm and yanking her close.
“J, stop!”
J ignored her. “You clearly have no understanding of the gravity of this situation due to your multiple, repeated instances of disobedience. Do you realize what you almost did out there?”
Cyn squirmed uncomfortably in J’s grip. “Hu-rting m-e.”
Tessa rushed forward. “Stop! She doesn’t understand—”
J whipped to her, nearly shaking with rage. “I don’t care if she doesn’t understand! The outcome would have been the same whether she understands what she was doing or not!”
“Please lay off, J, it isn’t her fault.”
“No. I’m not letting this go. What if she was seen, Tessa?”
“But she wasn’t!”
“Well she very nearly was . And if she was, do you realize how bad that would end? She would be killed. Me, N, and V would be killed. You would be beaten within an inch of your life for one of your “damaged” workers acting out at such an important party. Hell, it’s a miracle any of us are standing here having this conversation right now.”
Tessa was silent, but almost spoke a multitude of times, though couldn’t find the words.
J huffed and tried to continue, “Tessa, you have to see reason—”
“I'M NOT THROWING HER OUT!” the girl screamed, the frustration boiling over.
“I’m not asking you to! I just don’t want you to be blinded by the excitement of having a new drone around! You need to be realistic!”
Tessa silently strode to her bed and sat down, taking a few deep breaths to calm the fury inside of her. After a moment, she finally spoke.
“You’re right. You’re right….. She doesn’t understand. But it’s because she hasn’t been taught. There was plenty you were oblivious too when you first arrived. We just need to teach her.”
Tessa stood and turned back to the little worker.
“Cyn, I need you to listen. I told you. You can’t leave right now,” she admonished. “Until you’re all fixed up and integrated with the fleet, I need you to stay in my room. If my parents spot you and start to ask you questions about tasks and identification, it will get ugly fast.”
“B-ut w-hat if I’m not not-iced?” Cyn’s head rolled limply to the side.
Tessa shook her head. “That isn’t a risk we can take. Tonight you were almost seen by the entire party.”
“B-ut I wa-sn’t goi-ng to be s-een.”
J sighed. “Yes, you were, Cyn, you—”
“No. Th-ey can only se-e me when I wa-nt to be s-een.”
J bristled in irritation, Tessa placing a calming hand on her shoulder.
The girl sighed. “We just need to reach her.” She held one of Cyn’s abnormally warm hands in her own. “Cyn, even if you don’t get spotted, it will make me feel better. I’ll be worried sick about you if you’re off wandering around the manor.”
“Oh. I do-n’t want th-at.”
“Then will you stay in here? For me?”
“Rele-nting. Oka-y…..”
“Thank you, Cyn. And it’s only temporary. If you follow the rules, you wont be in danger of my parents sending you back out to the dump. Does that make sense?”
“Thin-king.” Then, after a moment, “Nod-ding.”
Tessa sighed with relief. She turned to J and smiled, giving her a triumphant look. She turned back to Cyn and continued gently, “I know it has to be tough being in a new environment, especially one that moves so quickly, so we have a special little thing we do as a welcome.”
“It started when N arrived. You sit in the middle of a big blanket and the others grab the corners and toss you.”
“Confus-ed. Tessa, ho-w did you do it w-ith J? Th-ere’s only one of you to bou-nce the blan-ket.”
Tessa shrugged. “It wasn’t a tradition yet. Instead I stuffed her in my bed and just snuggled with her—”
“Tessa!” J hissed, her face flushing.
“Oh come on, we snuggle every night. And she’s going to live here with us, it’s not like we can hide. And why would we?”
Cyn looked up to Tessa. “Hopeful. Can I cuddle too?”
“No,” J stated before Tessa could say anything.
“Yes,” Tessa corrected. “If you’re ever scared or upset, you can sleep with me.”
She glanced over to J, her eyes having been replaced with “ running//: jealousy.exe”.
Tessa leaned over to J and whispered, “We want her to feel comfortable here, J. And no need to be jealous, you know you’re the only one for me.”
J flushed again, blush marks appearing on her visor.
“Gr-oss.”
They both turned back to Cyn, who was staring at them unamused.
Tessa cleared her throat. “Anyways, we’ve gone over everything we really need to for now, but there will be more rules and things when you’re ready to take on tasks. No use in clogging up your memory banks with it now.”
“Ca-n we do the bl-anket thing th-en?”
“Not yet. We need N and V to help with that. Until then, let’s watch a movie. What do you think?”
“Excit-ed. I’ve nev-er seen a mo-vie before.”
“I got just the one for you. But first we gotta get you cozy.”
Tessa pulled a blanket out of the large chest near her bed, and swiftly scooped Cyn into it. In moments she was bundled up in the thick quilt, Tessa hefting her up as she narrated, “Gi-ggling. Gig-gling. Co-lon th-ree.”
Tessa has chosen some random animated movie, hoping it would hold the childlike drone’s attention. Though she more of an old-school-classic-horror kind of moviegoer overall, it didn’t really bother her all that much, and gave her and J a good excuse to cuddle. It was about halfway through when her door slowly creaked open, Tessa instinctually shoving the blanket over Cyn’s head.
“O-w,” came her muffled monotonous voice.
The door opened further to reveal N and V, the pair looking drained from their short shift.
They offered smiles to Tessa as she huffed, “Oh thank goodness it’s just you…..”
“Well that’s a pretty dry welcome,” V quipped with a playful smile.
“Sorry, sorry. Just glad it isn’t mother . We were watching a movie waiting for you guys.”
“Is N ba-ck?” Cyn asked, still squashed under the blanket.
“Oh, yep, sorry Cyn.” Tessa pulled the blanket off, the little worker excitedly looking to N.
She grinned at him, happily chattering, “Did you kn-ow that if done corre-ctly a fla-yed hum-an will die of dehy-dration be-fore blo-od loss?”
“Metal,” Tessa stated.
N looked less than thrilled by the statement, though followed up with, “Did you know that dogs all have unique nose-prints?”
Cyn paused. “N-o, I did no-t.”
“We were waiting for you two to do the initiation,” J stated, forcibly ending the tangent.
N perked up. “Oh! I forgot about that! Then can we finish the movie after?”
“You were just complaining about how tired you were on our way up here,” V smirked with an arched brow.
“Not anymore!” he chirped, hustling over to where Tessa kept her spare bedding. He quickly dug out a large blanket. He spread it across the floor and excitedly held one corner, standing at attention.
“Hold your horses, N.” Tessa looked down at Cyn. “You ready now or do you want to keep watching?”
Cyn looked down. “Hm. Thi-nking. L-et’s do it….. now. Co-lon three.”
“Yes!” N cheered.
“Alright, everyone take a corner,” Tessa instructed. “Cyn, you sit right in the middle on your back.”
Everyone got into position, and N counted off. “One….. two….. three!”
Tessa had never seen anyone display true ragdoll physics in real life before, but today was the day. Cyn flopped limply as the blanket leapt up and down. Tessa would have thought she was dead if not for the glow of her eyelights, her expression thrilled and beaming.
“Hig-her. Highe-r. Giggle,” she requested monotonously, all while flailing like an under-stuffed plush.
The four obliged, and tossed Cyn higher and higher, the little drone’s visor seeming to glow brighter with each moment of airtime she caught.
Sweat was beaded on the human’s brow, her shoulders staring to ache from the repetitive motion. “Getting a workout, ey’ J?” Tessa prompted, turning to her worker.
“I’m actually fine. But if you need to stop then we can stop.”
“No. No st-opping ev-er,” Cyn grinned as she landed on her side, immediately getting tossed back up again.
“I gotta stop, Cyn. If my arms fall off how am I supposed to fix you up?”
“Hm-m. Tr-ue.”
The tossing slowed to a safe halt, the four letting the blanket sink to the ground. Tessa dropped her corner and shook out her arms as N helped Cyn off the floor and onto the bed.
“Movie time!” N sang happily as he pulled a quilt out from the chest at the foot of the bed.
He turned to V, the worker carefully folding up the blanket used to toss Cyn.
“Would you, uh, want to share the blanket, V?” N asked, small blush marks appearing on his visor.
V jumped, surprised, but replied, blushing, “Y-yeah! Sure, that sounds nice.”
Tessa’s attention was pulled from the two’s sweet moment by Cyn, asking “Can we ope-n a windo-w, Tessa? I’m a lit-tle. War-m.”
“Sorry, it’s too wet outside. Could cause mold in the curtains,” she replied, shrugging as she dimmed the lights.
“We already had to have them replaced once for that same reason, actually,” V added, looking over at the little worker. “I love the rain too. I wish we could run around in it without short circuiting.”
Cyn looked upset by Tessa’s refusal, but didn’t press any further, only curling her legs to her chest and staring ahead at the movie.
The girl unpaused it, winding it back by five minutes as a refresher for what was going on, and allowed herself to lay back, her eyes sliding shut. She smiled to herself as she let the movie become background noise, releasing a long-held breath.
Tessa had only closed her eyes for what she thought was a minute. She was half conscious, half in a dreamlike state when a sentence spoken by J broke through the thin veil.
“Did anyone see Cyn leave?”
She was awake in a second, shooting up and eyes flying open. She blinked, willing her eyes to focus as she did a hasty headcount. N and V sitting on the floor, J laying next to her in bed, and…..
The spot Cyn was laying on at the foot of the bed was empty. Fuck.
“No, no, no, no….. How did this happen? How did none of you notice?”
“N and I are down here, why didn’t J notice?”
J turned to her. “I swear I never once took my eyes off of her,” she stated. “I don’t know how this is possible. She shouldn’t be able to move this fast. She shouldn’t be able to be this sneaky. How the HELL does she keep doing it?”
Tessa shook her head, attempting to clear the last remnants of sleep from it. “Shit….. okay, I’ll check downstairs, you all search up here. Don’t want you guys to get spotted lurking around.”
Tessa hurried through the manor halls. The party had started to disperse, which meant less people around, but those that remained were less predictable. She didn’t know when a couple would leave or would be wandering the halls, so she had to stay vigilant in the common areas. As long as either she or her drones found Cyn before she bumped into another, less friendly, human, everything would be okay.
She turned into the library, and an acrid tang hit her like a slap to the face. It smelled like….. oil.
No. no, no, no, no, no, no, no, nonononononon…………
She looked to the end of the hall, something slick on the ground catching the light of the warm sconces. Her stomach began to twist not knots as she slowly approached, afraid of what she would find at the end. Would Cyn be laying dead beyond the bookshelves?
She steeled herself and came forward, getting a good look at the scene.
A black fluid was pooled in a gory splatter, small scraps of metal, wires, and rubber casing mixed in with the oil. It coated the library floor in a long, broken trail, an eerie, unsettling peacefulness settling over the scene. The trail led straight down into the basement, the trapdoor hanging wide open for anyone to stumble across.
She’s hurt. She’s hurt and it’s my fault. She’s hurt and it’s my fault.
She dashed across the room, not caring if she stepped in the liquid, only caring about finding the little drone hopefully, maybe, alive. She descended the basement ladder, her feet slipping on the inky substance that dripped off the rungs.
She touched down and whipped around, freezing at the sight before her.
Hunched over was a small figure, its back to Tessa. What looked to be a drone was torn in half, its circuits shredded and strewn across the floor. The figure seemed to be eating it, shoveling handfuls of wet, sloshing machinery into its mouth.
Tessa hesitantly took a step forward. “C-Cyn?”
A pair of golden yellow ovals spun to meet her gaze, an almost manic, feral light to them. She stumbled back, startled by the sudden flash. The glowing shapes illuminated the trail of oil, which led straight to the little drone.
The light her optics gave off was enough for Tessa to help gather the scene. Cyn was hunched over a dead worker, the robot brutally torn apart and its oil spilling down Cyn’s face. Something about the look in her golden gaze made the shadows feel heavy.
She locked eyes with the drone, and for a split second, fuzzy outlines hung in the dark, only visible in the periphery of her vision. Tentacles. Claws. Cameras. Hunger. She didn’t even realize, completely consumed by the brutal and strange scene before her.
“Tessa. Ple-ase,” Cyn began. “Le-t me exp-lain.” She picked herself up off the floor. Literally. She maneuvered her hand to pluck her legs off the ground, barley righting herself to an upright position.
“I kn-ow this lo-oks. Icky. But I ha-ve a….. cool-ant issue. Whe-n I came back onl-ine, my cooli-ng sys-tems. Didn’t. The o-nly thing I could thi-nk of to help was. Fr-esh oil.”
Cyn paused, her eyes searching the ground in front of her.
“I didn’t want to tell you becau-se I was wo-rried you wou-ld send me back to the d-ump.” She looked up at Tessa. “Are you? Goi-ng to se-nd me back to the du-mp?”
Tessa blinked at her, the prompting pulling her from her stupor. She pulled Cyn into a gentle hug, not wanting to put the little drone off balance. “No….. no , Cyn, I’m not throwing you back out there. Is that why you kept sneaking away? You were just trying to find something to help you feel better….. Oh, I feel terrible.”
“S-o can I sti-ll stay?”
“Of course. But this does make things……. difficult. ” Tessa paused and looked into Cyn’s eyes. “I can’t have you eating drones from my parent’s fleet. If they start going missing, someone is going to get suspicious. I’ll find you an alternative to oil. Or get it straight from JC Jensen. I don’t know. We’ll figure it out. I’m not throwing you away.”
Tessa pulled her back into a hug, the little drone reciprocating this time. Her grip was shockingly strong now. She would have to be to rip open a drone like that…..
Tessa let her eyes trail over the corpse, the bisected worker still dripping oil from its shredded tubes. It looked as if claws had torn through it, its rubber casing torn surprisingly cleanly.
“I need you to keep this between us, okay? Don’t tell N. Don’t tell V. And definitely don’t tell—”
“Tessa.”
A voice split the silence of the basement.
“What the hell am I looking at?”
The two whipped around, J standing behind them, a look of horror and utter disgust on her face.
“Shit,” Tessa muttered. Well, no sense in hiding it now. “J, I know this looks bad—”
“L-ick,” Cyn narrated as she slurped up a drop of oil trailing down her chin.
“You are not helping!” Tessa hissed at the little drone. She looked back up at J, the worker staring in disbelief.
Tessa stood, inadvertently revealing the corpse splattered across the floor. “I know this looks bad, but let me explain—”
“IS THAT A CORPSE?” J all but screamed, her gaze whipping between the dead worker and the oil-splattered Cyn.
“U-um, well, yes, but—”
The worker’s eyes were as wide as the moon as she stated, “Tessa. She is damaged. She is disobedient. And she. IS. A. CANNIBAL ? ARE YOU JOKING ?”
“J, J, please let me explain—”
“No, no. I can tolerate Cyn being here, and honestly I even admit that I may have overreacted a bit initially when you first brought her in, but you cannot defend her presence now. SHE’S EATING PEOPLE!”
“Because her cooling system is broken!” Tessa cried desperately, shielding Cyn with her arm. “Something’s wrong and she can’t process her oil right! She was just trying to stop herself from overheating!”
“So she KILLS people and drink their oil like a VAMPIRE? Tessa do you understand how this sounds?”
“YES! YES, I DO! AND I KNOW IT SOUNDS INSANE!” Tessa stopped herself. If she caught her parents’ attention she would have a mile long list of things to explain. She took a deep breath and continued.
“Yes, J, I know what it looks like and how it sounds. But she was desperate and was doing her best to solve the problem. That’s why she kept sneaking off. She was getting hotter and needed to find a way to cool herself down.” She glanced behind at the worker. “Was this the best way to do so? Definitely not, but it’s better than her overheating and dying.”
J was silent, the walls of the dank cellar pressing in more than usual. “We’re not telling N and V about this,” she stated, tracing her eyes over the corpse.
“Agreed.” I almost didn’t tell you about this either , she added silently. “We need to tell them about the coolant issue though. We can just…. leave out the part about how she got the oil this time.”
J still looked hesitant.
“Look, if they know about Cyn’s problem, then they can help us manage it. Eight hands are better than four.”
“I wo-uld like to hav-e four ha-nds,” Cyn said, the two turning to look at her.
Cyn had licked herself clean while the two had been talking, her white plating void of any drips or splatters. Her uniform was another story, the white fabric of the apron and button up shirt a slick, inky black. She sat next to the corpse in criss-cross applesauce, seemingly pacified by the large meal she had just finished.
“Let’s get that off ya……”
“Let me. I don’t want your dress to get dirty,” J said, beginning to pull Cyn’s dress off. For once, her limp arms worked in their favor, allowing J to easily slide the soaked garments off of her.
J began to fold it up to take to the wash, but Tessa stopped her. “Just leave that down here. I’ll figure out what to do with it tomorrow.”
Cyn made grabby hands at the wad of clothing. “Can I su-ck on it?”
J turned to her. “What ? No. That’s disgusting.”
“But t-here’s still so much yu-mmy oil on it. Fro-wny face.”
“Then maybe you should have been neater when you ate that guy.”
“Gr-ompy.”
Tessa placed a hand on J’s shoulder. “We’ll get you better oil. You don’t need to scrounge for scraps. How long do you think you can go without needing more?”
“I th-ink I will be okay unt-il. Tom-orrow. As long as I do-n’t use too m-uch energ-y.”
“Good. First thing in the morning I’ll figure out how to sort this out.”
“You’re back!” N chirped, rushing to the door.
Tessa, Cyn, and J entered, the latter quietly closing the door behind them. Tessa was carrying Cyn, the drone now only wearing her wig
“We swept the entire upstairs and couldn’t find her. We figured we should just come back and wait for you," V explained.
“Where did you find her?” N asked.
Tessa braced herself. “The basement. And we learned something about our new resident troublemaker. Cyn seems to have a coolant processing issue. She was starting to overheat so she snuck off to find an oil can downstairs.” A drone counts as an oil can. Why not? “She was nervous to tell us since she already has a list of other troubles and felt bad adding to it.” Tessa gently ruffled Cyn’s hair, hoping her playfulness would put her more at ease.
“But where are her clothes?” V asked with concern.
“She slipped and dropped the oil can before we could find her,” J answered. “Tessa wiped her off as best she could before we came back. Improper drone unit management involving oil spills are a Class Three JC Jensen safety violation if left without proper cleanup. Don’t want any workplace lawsuits to be filed because of an unchecked incident.”
“That was J for ' I cleaned her up before coming upstairs so we didn’t leave a trail' . I think I did get most of it off of her, though. Nothing to worry much about.”
“I was planning on washing your sheets this week anyways. If anything gets on it I’ll easily be able to get it out,” J stated in an almost bragging tone. It was true, though. Her laundry prowess was unmatched by the others.
“We probably should head to bed,” Tessa stated, the thought of her soft sheets and blankets making her bones feel weary. “I’ll skip the nightly routine I think. Rather climb right in bed than bother brushing my teeth.”
“Can I sle-ep wit-h you?” Cyn asked.
“Course. First night in a new place must be scary. You’re more than welcome.”
J cleared her throat loudly. Tessa turned to her, J giving her an annoyed look.
Tessa chuckled at the protective drone. “You can share, J.”
She crossed her arms and mumbled, “No I can’t…..”
“Yes, you can. Don’t you remember how on edge you were the first night here?”
“Yeah, yeah……” she trailed off. She looked to Cyn. “But only for tonight. Cuddling is our thing.”
“No, cuddling is our thing. Not cuddling. Totally different,” Tessa stated as she strode to her bathroom, putting frisky emphasis on the first ‘cuddling’.
J’s face flushed and blush lines appeared on her visor.
“Do you want to pick a stuffed animal, Cyn?” V asked, noticeably changing the subject. “Tessa has tons.”
“Co-lon cap-ital O. Ye!” she chirped excitedly.
Tessa slid out a bin from under her bed, revealing an array of colorful plushies.
Cyn rolled off the bed directly into the tub. Tessa reaching to catch her, through stopping when she realized what the little drone was doing. She dug around in the heap for a few moments before picking one off the top of the pile.
“I lik-e this o-ne.”
Cyn was holding a brown teddy bear, arguably the most normal of Tessa’s plushies. It was one of her personal favorites, next to Bonecrusher and Mr. Flipflop of course. She had gotten it when she was younger and had slept with it every night before she found J. She still kept it on her bed though, placing it by her pillows when she made it every morning.
“Why’d you pick that one?” Tessa asked, helping her back onto the bed.
“Sm-ells lik-e you,” she replied innocently.
J rolled her eyes. “ Creeeeeeeeepy .”
“It’s sweet, ” Tessa corrected. “That’s a good choice,” she said to her as she helped her out of the heap and onto her bed. Tessa looked over to the charging ports, the fact that Cyn would need to be plugged in suddenly occurring to her.
N must have noticed her glance, as he grabbed the cord and chirped, “Cyn can use my charger tonight. I have plenty of battery for tomorrow.”
“Tha-nk you. N. Col-on thre-e.”
“That’s very kind of you N. I’ll figure out how to install a new one soon. Can’t have my friends feeling sluggish.”
“Just want our new buddy to feel welcome!” he added with a rather adorable salute.
Tessa easily hooked Cyn up to the cord and helped her into bed. She nestled into the pillows, emitting what appeared to be some sort of purring sound.
Tessa slid into bed right after, hugging Cyn close. J climbed in after her and pulled the blankets over them. J wrapped an arm over Tessa, tightly pressing the girl to her chest. J was usually the big spoon, her protectiveness showing through even in her sleeping patterns.
Tessa closed her eyes and pulled the little drone close, the warmth she gave off creating a heavenly mix with the cold steel of J’s body against her own. She gently ran her fingers through Cyn’s hair, feeling her internal motor slow down as she eased into sleep mode.
You’re safe here. No dump or corpses or death. Just a home with a new family. Nothing will ever hurt you again.